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Motherboards
During the launch of Z87 motherboards ASUS surprised a lot of people when they announced their “Hero” SKU of the Republic of Gamers line of motherboards. When the Hero was released it was an extremely popular motherboard simply because it brought an ASUS ROG motherboard into the reaches of most peoples’ budgets. A surprising move because ROG motherboards have traditionally been extremely expensive products that target a fairly niche market. It is unlikely that ASUS ROG would have made this move last generation without the price pressure of rival brands such as Gigabyte, with their G1 Sniper Z87, MSI, with their Z87-G45 Gaming and ASRock, with their Z87 Fatal1ty Killer. All of these competing products have driven the price of gaming motherboards down to the point where gaming motherboards are no longer exclusive or expensive products, but accessible to the fairly mainstream PC user and mainstream budget. Now ASUS have added the Ranger to sit just below the Hero for the Z97 platform which is another smart move given that Gigabyte and MSI have become even more aggressive with the pricing of their Gaming Series motherboards which start at just £100/$140. The main benefit of the ASUS Maximus VII Ranger is that it carries a 10-15% lower price premium (depending on the region and retailer) than the ASUS Maximus VII Hero but drops fairly little in terms of features or specifications. From our discussions with ASUS they have clarified that the main differences between the Hero and the Ranger are that the Hero has:
Motherboards
Today we will be taking a look at two AMD 990FX boards and comparing them to a similarly spec'd Z68 system to find out what the new boards offer in today's marketplace. As always we will be focusing on motherboard specific tests such as USB3, PCIe and SATA 6Gb/s tests with a few more general benchmarks thrown in for good measure.
Motherboards
Today we have one of the first high end P67 based boards on our test bench. With their Maximus IV Extreme ASUS hope to deliver a board which exceeds anything else on the market and we will be testing it in a selection of synthetic and real world tests to establish how good it is.
Motherboards
On our test bench today is the latest product from the ASUS RoG brand, their Maximus V Formula motherboard. We will be comparing it to another Z77 board in a selection of real world and synthetic tests to find out how ASUS look to improve on the base design and how far they have pushed the enthusiast feature set... watercooled heatsinks anyone?
Motherboards
ASUS's Republic of Gamers boards are advertised as gaming-oriented boards, yet they also have a deadly alter ego which caters to the extreme overclocking hobbyist (à la Batman-Bruce Wayne). Today we explore the reasons why the sub-US$200 mATX Maximus V GENE (Z77) has a cult following among enthusiasts these days and also put an Ivy Bridge 3770K under SS Phase Change cooling.
Motherboards
Kitguru has been busy for the last week preparing multiple reviews for the latest Intel launch today. In this particular review we will look at the Asus Maximus V Gene when paired up with the Intel i7 3770k processor. In this review we will focus on this system as a performance oriented media center, with testing via the latest Intel Graphics ‘HD4000′.
Motherboards
ASUS delayed the release of the Maximus VI Formula till after Computex 2013. We got a glimpse of the board at the ASUS booth and it looked at first glance like a TUF/ROG hybrid. The ROG series are renown as high end motherboards, stunning looks and high performance; however not engineered solely for gamers, but the enthusiast and extreme overclockers get their sweets too. Usually the ROG series had 3 members: the mATX Gene, the midrange Formula and the flagship, the Extreme board. With the Z87 series, ASUS throws an entry level priced ROG in the mix with the Maximus VI Hero board and even a mITX board, the Impact. The Hero is comparable as being the vanilla board of the Republic of Gamers line up. The small mATX Gene VI gives those with small cases the option to install a top class motherboard; the Formula for those that seek a full ATX board packed with features, yet still at an affordable price level. The flagship Extreme board is the most expensive and targeted at those that want either the best of the best or the ultimate board that can push the envelope, no matter the cooling method used.
Motherboards
Does a Mini-ITX board deserve the ASUS ROG tag? There's only one way to find out - let's check out the tiny, yet feature-packed Maximus VI Impact.
Motherboards
ASUS has been cranking out the motherboards lately, or actually, I suppose I should say they are continuing to crank out the motherboards. In particular, they have been pushing out more than a few of their Republic of Gamers boards. These are ASUS' flagship line and usually contain not only top notch features, but are also capable of top notch performance.
Motherboards
Not all that long ago ASUS was looking for a name to put on their top-of-the-line products. They sent out an e-mail to journalists, enthusiasts and customers (some of which fell into all three groups) asking what we thought this name should be. The overwhelming choice was Republic of Gamers. To be honest with you, it was the only real choice (the other one was bad enough that I do not even remember it). From that day forward, if a product had the ROG logo on it you knew you were getting a top notch piece of hardware.
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